Get Set for PHP 7

The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a server-side scripting language used for web development and it is also used as a general programming language. It allows developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases. It is basically used for developing web based software applications. It is fast, pragmatic, flexible and powers everything from the blog to the popular websites in the world.

PHP was originally created as a small open source project that has evolved with the time. Its very first version was unleashed in 1994 which was created by Rasmus Lerdorf. The reference implementation of PHP (powered by the Zend Engine) is now produced by The PHP Group. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page. Now it stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, which is a recursive backronym.

Some very important characteristics of PHP are its Efficiency, Simplicity, Flexibility, Security and Familiarity.

Till Date PHP versions:

PHP version 1.0 was released publicly to accelerate bug location and improve the code.

The first version grew organically and was officially released as version 2 in November 1997.

It was rewritten in 1997 which formed the base of PHP 3 and changed the name of language to PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It was launched officially in June 1998.

The next rewriting was started in 1999 and PHP 4 was released in May 2000, which was powered by Zend Engine 1.0. It reached version 4.4.9 till August 2008 and then its development was stopped.

PHP 5 was launched in July 2004, which was powered by the new Zend Engine II. In 2008, PHP 5 became the only stable version under development.

Project for PHP 6 was initiated in 2005 to bring native Unicode support throughout PHP. However due to shortage of developers and performance problems, PHP 6 project was officially abandoned in March 2010.

PHP 7.0.0 is the latest major version which have its foundations from an experimental PHP branch, which was originally named as ‘phpng’ (PHP next generation). It aims at optimizing PHP performance by refactoring the Zend engine while retaining near-complete language compatibility.

PHP 7.0.0 and its release in 2015

Due to major internal changes in ‘phpng’, it will be released as a new major version of PHP rather than a minor 5.x release. On 12th November 2015, the PHP development team announced the immediate availability of PHP 7.0.0 RC 7. The RC 7 has been released for development preview. It is not for use in production.

RC 7 (Release Candidate 7) is being considered as that beta version with potential to be a final product unless any significant bugs emerge. It marks the final feature freeze, all changes hereafter will be committed for stabilization/fixes only.

This is the 12th pre-release of the new PHP 7 major series. The RC 7 version is available to developers for testing and reporting, if they find any bugs or incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

The development team is planning to bring out the PHP 7.0.0 after usual two-week test period from release of RC 7, if no major issues appear.

Important new features of PHP 7.0.0

Combined Comparison Operator (< = >): PHP 7 will come with a new operator, which can be used for combined comparisons – mostly while dealing with sorting.

Improved Performance: PHP 7 is based on the phpng project that was developed to speed up PHP applications. The performance gains from PHP 7 will be huge! It varies from 25% to 70% on real-world apps.

Return Type and Scalar Type Declarations: PHP 7 will allow developers to declare what kind of return type a function is expected to have. It is similar to argument Type Hints. Also, argument type hints and the return type declarations now support the new scalar type. It allows developers to denote that they are expecting strings, floats, ints or bools to be passed or returned.

2X Faster: As phpng was open sourced and was merged later into PHP 7, its performance has been doubled in many cases. To explain its extent – when phpng was published, the WordPress homepage required approximately 9.4 billion CPU instructions to execute. But now, it requires only 2.6 billion – that’s 72% less.

AST – Abstract Syntax Tree: An AST will provide many advantages including the potential for more optimizations that would make PHP run even faster.

Asynchronous Programming: It would allow future PHP versions to easily implement support to the execution of parallel tasks within the same request. It will push its performance level to a completely different level.

Some more exciting features are:

Consistent 64-bit support

Many fatal errors are now Exceptions

The null coalescing operator

Removal of old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions

Anonymous Classes

The latest developments of the PHP language has certainly been very exciting.

Krify has consummated innumerable projects of development with PHP programming. Our development team is longing for arrival of new PHP 7.0.0 to utilize it to develop exciting IT products.

Do you know who are Professional Developers of Hybrid Apps using PHP 7 ?

Krify has consummated innumerable projects of development with PHP programming. They have competence in building IT products using PHP. Arrival of PHP 7 with new exciting features will bring storm in the domain of app and web development.

If you are in need of experienced PHP developers, Krify has a team of PHP developers who have sound knowledge on PHP 7 and experience of working on multiple projects for our clients in Europe and USA. They have hands on experience in website development. We don’t compromise on quality and believe in delivering the projects within the timelines framed. Our team of developers are flexible to work in multiple time zones to suit the needs of our international clients.